Praise Is Our Only Hope

A Rock of Remembrance.

Toward the end of 2005 I found myself in a place I recognized.

I wasn’t flat on my back. Not the acutely crippling sort. The kind that creeps in quietly and leans on you over time. Mild at first, but slowly gaining weight over months. Enough to make life slowly lose its colour without any one obvious collapse.

I hadn’t been doing nothing about it.

I’d done all the sensible stuff — thought as positively as I could, kept up with working out, eating and sleeping reasonably well, maintaining good friendships, keeping regular prayer and Bible reading going, helping other people, doing things I genuinely enjoyed. All good. All necessary things. And yet I could feel myself slipping ever so slowly into the gloom. Barely perceptible, but nevertheless it was happening.

By late 2005 I’d been praying specifically about it for a week or so. Asking my Heavenly Father for His answer, because my own plan of attack clearly wasn’t getting the job done. My mild blues weren’t getting dramatically worse, but neither were they lifting. I felt stuck.

God answered me through a dream.

In it, my nephew Sam — about thirteen at the time — and I were walking across a huge flat brown expanse reaching to every horizon. No trees or buildings anywhere. Nothing green in sight. Only brown under the sky.

Then on the far horizon I noticed a tiny cloud of dust starting to rise. It circled higher and higher as it came closer. Standing still now, I watched with a growing sense of dread as a menacing grey shape rose into view through the swirling dust.

It grew and grew until I could make out the top half of a giant dragon-dinosaur-lizard thing advancing slowly but ever so methodically towards us.

It was in no hurry.

But it was coming straight at us.

The sun was still high. There was nowhere to run and nothing to hide behind/under. As the thing got closer, it also got bigger. Not just nearer — bigger. It was angry and as it’s rage increased it kept growing larger. Until it towered over us like a six-storey building still adding floors.

Then I saw what it was made of.

Not flesh and blood.

Steel.

Not plates joined by bolts or welds either, but hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of interlocking chain links. All moving together with complete fluidity to express it’s very obvious rage. I realised straight away no man-made weapon was going to stop this beast. There was no brain to shoot. No heart to pierce or other vitals to bleed out. I was completely exposed with not a single weapon in hand or anywhere within reach or even sight.

So we stood there.

And then, instead of the paralysing fear I expected, I heard my own voice say calmly and confidently to Sam:

“We must sing psalms and songs of praise to God or be destroyed. Praise is our only hope of victory.”

So we did.

Despite our lack of tune and without musical backup, we raised our voices and sang out words of faith. Snatches of the psalms and hymns we knew. Truth about the goodness and greatness of God.

And then the most wonderful thing happened.

The terrifying monster began to look punch-drunk.

What moments earlier had seemed totally indestructible now swayed in confusion. Then slowly, as we kept praising God, it began to crumble.

Link by link.

Before long the vast interlocked chain-like pieces started cascading down in torrents. Roaring and thrashing its frustration, the metallic dino-dragon fought hard against its own reduction — but it could not prevail. It shrank even as it disintegrated, until it collapsed into a million pieces. Disappearing into the dust of its own ruin.

I woke immediately knowing God had answered my prayer.

I’m not naturally inclined to sing aloud. Outside church worship, it just never struck me as something essential for me personally. But I knew from that dream this was no side issue. This was the direct answer to my recent petitions. God was showing me a weapon I had neglected.

And I can tell you now that turning my eyes — and my voice — toward God to thank Him for His goodness to me in Christ has become a mainstay weapon of war. Through this lesson I learnt that vocal praise times at home, whether alone or nowadays with Eden and our kids, are times where God meets me and heals my soul in a special way. I don’t know exactly how it works. I only know He blesses my spirit there as I exalt His holy name.

I’ve learnt the harder side of it too. When I let myself get too “busy” to make room for that kind of praise, I end up spiritually dry, flat, and featureless. Easy prey.

So this is one of my Rocks of Remembrance now:

When I asked God for His answer to the gloom that would not lift, He did not give me a technique.

He gave me a dream.

A dragon made of chains.

And the strange, simple instruction that voicing His praise out loud was our only hope.

That was no small lesson then.

It still isn’t now.